Damn it! The Solomon Scandals novel—topic of a just-posted podcast—has become too timely. Billionaires are turning iconic news organizations into propaganda outlets on occasion. Witness The Washington Post’s defense of the White House ballroom. My Kirkus-recommended novel, conceived in the 1970s, exposes the unholy triad of media, business and government. The book’s available in print […]
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Could a robot reporter have investigated D.C. sleaze better than I did in the 1970s?
Could a reporter bot have been me in real life in the 1970s—or Jonathan Stone, the far more dashing investigative journalist in my novel The Solomon Scandals? And who would have made a better sleuth, humans or AI? With the above in mind, let me share a cautionary story about a CIA-occupied building and an […]
Read MoreThe decline—and future promise—of investigative journalism
The Solomon Scandals, my D.C. newspaper novel, is solidly rooted in Washington and suburbs. But could future Jonathan Stones break explosive Washington stories without even leaving hometowns in the hinterlands? That’s one of the intriguing concepts in a video accompanying Investigative Shortfall—Mary Walton’s generally downbeat article in the American Journalism Review’s September issue. The video […]
Read MoreScandals and the Internet—or lack of it
The Detroit Free Press and the rival News decided to print home-delivery editions just three days a week. Competition from the Web killed off the other four days. Similar scenarios are or will be unfolding elsewhere, as shown by the move of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to the Web. So how does the Internet figure in […]
Read MoreDeep Throat is dead—and so are the old rules of investigative journalism
Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat, the whistleblower in the FBI who blew open much of the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post, is dead. Leonard Downie, a Post staffer at the time, writes how much investigative reporting has changed since then—for example, technologically. Imagine staying in touch with a source who totes a prepaid cell […]
Read MoreSen. Ribicoff’s spooky investment
Sen. Abraham Ribicoff, the late Connecticut senator who also served in President John F. Kennedy’s cabinet, secretly held a $20,000 investment in a GSA-leased building that the CIA moved into. My story for States News Service, reproduced below, appeared in the New Haven Register on May 29, 1975, and later made the NBC Nightly News. […]
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